HAPPY THANKSGIVING 2025

 We are finally in our forever home for our first Thanksgiving.  Turkey is in the oven (one of them), yeast rolls are rising, everything else is prepped and ready to go, and we have some nice jazz music playing over our ceiling speakers.  Oh, and the doors to the screened in porch are open with someone on a property nearby burning their fireplace so we get to enjoy the fireplace smell without having to clean it up, ha.

It's wonderful and we are so grateful.

We are also thankful for all of you coming along with us on this journey.  It's been a process getting here but hey, fun times are ahead, that's for sure!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO YOU ALL!

RAINY WEATHER A VIEW AND A TURKEY UPDATE

Thankgiving Day is almost upon us!

Here is a morning of coffee (and hot tea for me) on the screened in porch.  No big table yet but we're using an end table and a couple of chairs.  We'll never get tired of this view, that's for sure!

We had some heavy rain the other day, in fact, it was our first big thunderstorm since being out here.  It was pretty intense, and there was about an hour of tornado warnings (radar indicated tornado) but thankfully, everything was fine for us, the storms went the other direction and did unfortunately cause some damage.  

The plants are happy with the rain for sure.

The next morning, when I was heading to work, it was wet and very foggy!  But again, wouldn't trade this view now for anything.  Quiet and peaceful...

Dry brining turkeys update:

Here they are as of last night.  Two 13.5lb turkeys doing their thing.  The skin is tightening up and getting more translucent.  They are rubbed with olive oil and then seasoned inside and out and under the skin with our blend of seasoning.  They should taste amazing and we can't wait!

Tomorrow, they hit the ovens!

Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

THANKSGIVING PREP UNDERWAY IN THE NEW HOUSE

Our first Thanksgiving in the new house at the farm is coming soon.  

We can think of no better way to wake up and have a cup of coffee and breakfast while looking out the window at this!

We aren't having anyone over as the rest of the house isn't ready for that.  The dining room table is still a landing zone for unpacking from the garage and the screened in porch dining table is still in the storage unit, ha.

We cleaned off the island so we could prep our turkeys!  We have SO much room.  Now we can begin work on meal prepping for Thanksgiving!

We are doing our tradition of dry brining in the fridge for several days prior and now that we have the space with our garage refrigerator, we are doing two this year.  One for us for Thanksgiving and one for roasting and taking all the meat off to stock the freezer for turkey meals through the year.

And if I find some on clearance after Thanksgiving, there might be more since we have the space.

We rub the turkeys with olive oil and our farmhouse blend of spices and then pop them in the fridge.

They both fit perfectly!  This was something we could never have done before without the space (and double ovens to cook them) so it's a win/win for sure!

Hope your Thanksgiving week is off to a good start!

NEW FRUIT TREES AND BUSHES

Our "new" county has an annual fruit tree sale via their master gardening group.  It's a fundraiser of sorts and they choose varieties that are perfect for our area.  They sent out a list of what is available, and you order and then pick up a month or so later.  I chose what we wanted/needed and placed my order.  It was a rainy day when I needed to pick them up (the following pics were after the rain, ha).

I drove the truck to the location (nearby small town) and I must say, they had a well-oiled machine at the pick-up location, that's for sure!  I drove in, they checked my ID, verified our order and radioed ahead to another spot where they started picking the items.  Then, I drove over there, they checked again and loaded them into the back of the truck.  While they were loading, someone stood at the driver's window and explained when to plant, how to protect, etc for each plant we selected.  Pretty cool!  I made it back in just a light rain.

Here are the six we got:

A "panamint nectarine" to replace the one we lost last year.

A "mid pride peach" also to replace another one.

We had four blueberry bushes, one of them was not doing well so we opted to get a replacement for it.  We think the one that we had to get rid of was not suited for our climate.  This one is a "jewel blueberry", perfect for our area.

We only have one plum currently and an empty bed next to that one.  Needed a second one so we chose a "Santa Rosa plum".

Here's something new.  Of course, we do have dewberries growing wild on our property but we're going to try this as a little something extra.  This is a "Natchez blackberry", a thornless variety.  It will be fun to see how it is to grow some blackberries and how different they are from the wild dewberries.

And for 2nd Man, I bought a "Satsuma mandarin orange".  He loves them as snacks and now that we are here full time, we can keep our citrus protected as needed.  This one won't go in the ground just yet; we'll get a large pot for it so we can move it as needed.  Maybe once it gets bigger, we can move it into the ground and just cover it in Winter.  We can keep it lit with the C9 Christmas bulbs that we have for that purpose.

Next Spring, I will get a lime and a Meyer lemon.

Here is an example of a couple of spots.  I have already cleared them out (did that last weekend!).  They'll be ready for planting next Spring, once Winter is done with us.  There are a couple I can plant now, but it might be easier to wait until the Spring with so much else going on getting settled into the new house.  Anyway, in these two, the peach will go in the square bed, and the round one will be for the blueberry.  The others have been cleared.

This leaves us needing to only replace one more.  That crazy apple tree that is all bent in the wrong direction.  It's just not growing right and it's not producing fruit properly, but that one will require a bit of work.  It's a Spring project for sure.  Or maybe the removal is a good cool weather Winter project and the planting of the new one will be a Spring project.

WE ARE LOVING LIFE

 It was a lot of hard work getting here, but we are here and wow, we are loving every moment of it.  We are at peace and enjoying our new life.

The builders came and removed all the debris, the dumpster and the porta potty and now we have our wonderful view back...

This is the view from the kitchen sink.

Outside it is nice and quiet and peaceful once again.

2nd Man is loving the kitchen.  This was the day we closed.  Unfortunately, it's a bit crazy now as we unpack but more pics when it's more organized.

Speaking of...

...if you look at our previous pics, you can see we have made quite a bit of progress.  Of course, a lot of it is us bringing it inside the house and then putting it on a horizontal surface so we can figure out what goes where.  Slow and steady but it's progress!

We've also gotten some of the furniture from the old farmhouse out of the barn and shed.  I loaded these chairs into the truck and drove them to the back of the house.  We washed them and got them all nice and clean.  These are the chairs that will go around the table on the screened in porch (the table is in the nearby storage unit, we'll work on that soon).

While I was outside working, the "neighbors" came to say hi.  Or maybe they were just nosey about who moved in next door, ha!

The sunsets alone are worth it!

My drive to work it about an hour each way.  Not too bad.  The only downside is that this time of year, I get home in the dark.  So I can't do anything outside (well, much, I do water as needed) until the weekend.

Another thing, time seems to go slower out here and we love that.  We get up early on the weekends, I've been able to do stuff outside whenever I want,  we've run some errands to little nearby towns to learn the grocery stores and shops, we're getting things put up and we're eating some healthy good food.

Not gonna lie, it's wonderful out here.

CARDINALS COME TO VISIT

The day we closed on the house, we stopped by afterward with our keys to lock it all up.

We looked out the dining room window and this cardinal was sitting there looking into the house.  

The day we moved in, we looked out the kitchen window and this cardinal was on the front porch railing.

In the days since we've moved in, we have several cardinals all hanging around the house all the time.  We remember a story about cardinals coming to visit are loved ones who have passed coming by to say hello.  We'd like to believe our parents or maybe even Ma who owned this place before us, are coming to visit us and wish us well in our new adventure.

We are LOVING life here.  I'll write more of an update Tuesday, but for now, just know that we are in our element and life is good!

As a bonus, here is some good food:

For our first real breakfast/brunch in the new house we had this.  Scrambled egg whites (plus one whole egg for the color) with potatoes, jalapeño, cilantro and onion...homemade corn tortillas, a smashed avocado and some homemade salsa to finish it all off.

#lifeisgood

SOME MORE APPLIANCES

 We had some appliances delivered after we closed.  The first two were refrigerators.  We have always wanted a second fridge for the garage for extra space.  We found a Frigidaire model that was "garage ready" meaning it's made to be in the extreme temps of a garage (hot summer/cold winter).

This is it in place.  We put it next to the utility sink which is right next to the door going outside to the grilling/cooking porch.  It will be convenient for carrying food in and out to that area.

Here is the inside.  Now keep in mind, this is all refrigerator, no freezer space.  We just wanted to have the space for drinks and then a spot for doing our marinating and dry brining of turkeys/chicken.  Also, a space for fruit and produce that need to be refrigerated.  Should be very convenient.

Then inside, we got the matching (to our other appliances) refrigerator.  We decided we didn't want ice/water in the door; we like the clean look outside...

...and the extra space it gives inside with no ice in the door.  There is still water inside in the door, you can see it there on the left door, but we'll have our water machine in the pantry as well.  There is ice in the lower freezer section.  You might ask, you have lots of fridge space but what about freezer space?  Well, the lower one here will be for stuff we use regularly and often but you know me and my vacuum sealer and prepping food for later...

We got a second freezer.   It actually is the match to the garage refrigerator.  They are made to be used side by side if needed.  It's basic but like the fridge, this one is all freezer.  We will have a LOT of space for stuff.  We put it in the laundry room. 

Our goal, between the pantry and our fridge and freezer space, is to get stocked up and then we will only have to go to the store for specific things.  As you can see, already getting things in here (unorganized, ha).  These are some of the things from the prior freezer (the rest is currently in the bottom freezer drawer of the main fridge in the kitchen).  Soon, the goal will be to get this organized.  Stay tuned!

And yes, for those curious, we are getting a generator to keep these three appliances running in the event of power outage.

We're getting settled in!  Slowly but surely!

STORY OF THE MOVE

So the move was eventful, kinda stressful and we were worn out but it's over and we're moved in.  On Wednesday we closed.  On Thursday the packers came.  It was chaos, ha.  We had packed as much as we could but we needed help.  They came and did their thing.  It was a lot of boxes.

On Friday morning, the movers showed up.  They were supposed to be there at 9am but were running late because they had an "incident" on the way.

They arrived about 10:45am.  That put us behind for the day, at least with our plans to get out before rush hour traffic kicked in.

Our building has two freight elevators, and we reserved one of them.  They program it so that it only goes up and down to our floor.  They sent four guys and they were pretty good in getting stuff out and loaded.  They used lots of moving blankets and wrapped things well so that part was good as well.

The truck was a good size but it was almost filled it up by the time they were finished.

We had a bunch of stuff in the basement storage unit.  I had spent the better part of a week organizing it all and getting it all ready.  This is what it looked like.  Some collectible things, a large part of our Christmas decorations and our main Christmas tree.  It took about 3 elevator rides up and down to get it all out onto the loading dock area so they could get it put on the truck.

I point all of this out because it will come into play later.

We went out on the balcony one last time for posterity and took a few pictures.  The apartment was finally emptied and so we locked it up and left.  They were still loading the truck when we left about 4pm to try to beat rush hour.  Didn't work, ha.

They showed up about 6:30 and started unloading.  They brought in all the furniture first and put it where we pointed and then all of the boxes were put in the garage along one side.  While all this was going on, we get a call from the apartment asking us to return the keys by 6pm or, since it was the 31st, we'd have to pay for another month.  

WHAT THE WHAT?

We were never even told we needed to bring them back before hand, we figured they'd just change the locks anyway for the next renters.

We called back and said "our lease should run through 11:59pm, what if we moved at 6pm instead of 9am?  We've been there 10 years, this is unacceptable!"

They agreed and said "just bring them back before midnight".  About 7:30pm, after the movers were gone, I headed back into town.  

I went up to the apartment to make sure all we didn't miss anything in the cabinets or closet shelves.

Everything was empty except, oops, we forgot the fridge contents!  Thankfully we had already moved the freezer stuff earlier in a cooler.

I go downstairs to the loading dock area and got a couple of boxes and went back upstairs to fill them up.  It took me about three trips (carrying heavy boxes) to load it up in the car and on the last trip, I dropped a jar of salsa and it breaks all over the ground.  Had to go find paper towels to clean it all up.  Then cut my finger, not bad but, being on blood thinners, I was bleeding.  Had to go to the restroom to clean that up!

I took the keys off the keyring to take them to the front desk and decided I wasn't sure about which one was the storage unit key, so on a whim, I decided to go down to the basement level and check it.  I pushed the button to call the elevator...

Look familiar?

Here's more.  Turns out about half the stuff from our storage unit, WAS STILL IN THE ELEVATOR!

Hours after they left!

It's like 9pm and I was in full on panic mode.  No way any of this would fit in the car.  The apartment had been trying to figure out all afternoon/evening who it belonged to and were about to just take it all to the dumpster.  I called the moving company, the owner answered and I said "we have a major problem!".  He had me send pictures and, also panicked, he called an employee that had a truck.  About an hour later, it gets loaded (with me helping since it was just one guy).

Finally, I get the keys to the front desk and I'm on the road back home.  It's almost 11pm.  Then I had to stop and get us something to eat and we also needed body wash as we couldn't find out bathroom stuff and we both needed showers.  I finally get home about 12:30am.  It was a very long, and in the end, very stressful day.  But I was home, we were together in our new house.

We had full tummies, we had our showers, we put clean sheets on the bed and we slept with the windows open. 

Best. Night's. Sleep. Ever!

The next day, the guy brought the stuff that was left in the elevator.  And they gave us a discount on our move. 

For the last week, we've been living out of boxes and getting things put up.  We open them...

...and then use two sets of shelves as a place to put the next things to go through...

We've managed to open them all so that we can see what is in each box so that we can go back to get things as we need them.  Have already emptied about two dozen boxes.

After we open them, we move stuff to the other side of the garage to get them close to the door to bring them in and put them up.  It's a process, but it's working.  Funny story, we opened probably 20 boxes, couldn't find our utensils.  So, we bought some plastic ones and have been using them.  Then yesterday, we found that one of the first boxes we opened, had a second layer on the bottom and that was where all the utensils were, still in the drawer organizer.  Welp, that's the way it goes sometimes, ha.

But we're here and we're as happy as can be.  Slowly but surely, we're creating our new HOME!

FIRST MEAL IN OUR NEW HOUSE GOOD FOOD

Sunset out here is just so different!

It was so pretty to watch the sky change.

Our first "hot meal", after a week of sandwiches, was this.  Spaghetti and turkey meatballs with 2nd Man's homemade sauce.  It was so good.  Of course we have to get into our wine fridge and pop open a bottle of wine to toast our new home.

It's been a crazy first week but it's been a week!  We've lived here for a week?!  Crazy to believe.

Tomorrow's post will have a move update how it all transpired and the drama that went along with it, ha. 

Hope you all are having a great weekend, we sure are in our new house!

 

TWO NEW CHAIRS AND A POTENTIAL NEW HOBBY

OK, going to get back into posting.  Now fun stuff from our new house where we LIVE!

For our closing, I wanted to get something silly but memorable.  More on that further down.  We did need some new furniture.  We decided to get rid of our couches from the apartment since they were older and so we donated them to a women's shelter, where hopefully they will have more continued life.

With a larger living room in our new house, we decided to add a couple of chairs for both of us to sit in.  We found these:

We wanted something that looked like they belonged and were durable.  We settled on these.  They are a great color and so comfortable.  They also look great side by side.  But the best part?

They are also recliners!  This the standard position but they actually lay all the way back and almost flat.  Screened in porch open, birds chirping, a cool breeze...I have a feeling we'll doze off here quite often, ha.  Anyway, we need to get a proper table between them but this little one works in a pinch.

 

Now, for the quirky closing surprise:

I knew when we saw these chairs last Spring, and decided to get them for when we moved in, we needed something fun to sit there and do while watching TV.  So, I found these!

They are beginner crochet kits!  Made for anyone/any age, well I guess that covers us, ha!

Each kit has everything included, the yarn, a yarn needle, crochet hook, all the stuffing and things that go with it, they even have a pre-started piece.

I got the bee for me...

...and the baby chick for 2nd Man.

We have both watched videos of people crocheting and always thought it would be fun to learn.  My Grandmother crocheted, we have a lot stored away, and I remember many times sitting in their living room, both in their recliners (are recliners an age thing? I digress...) watching TV and she was just doing it like a machine.  Who knows if we'll catch on and want to do and learn more, but maybe between the two of us, one will go on to make new stuff.

Either way, it will be a fun adventure this Winter!  Stay tuned for that, ha.  We also got two new couches more on those later.  We're slowly (very slowly) getting settled in, but everything is just as we dreamed it would be, we are very happy.